A wide variety of electrical connectors have been designed for terminating flat cables or circuits, such as flat flexible cables, flexible printed circuits or the like. A typical connector for flat circuits includes a dielectric housing molded of plastic material, for instance. The housing has an elongated opening or slot for receiving an end of the flat circuit which has generally parallel, laterally spaced conductors exposed across the end. A plurality of terminals are mounted in the housing and are spaced laterally along the slot, with contact portions of the terminals engageable with the laterally spaced conductors of the flat circuit. An actuator often is movably mounted on the housing for movement between a first position whereat the flat circuit is freely insertable into the slot and a second position whereat the actuator clamps the circuit in the housing and biases the circuit against the contact portions of the terminals.
The actuator may comprise a slide member which is designed to be inserted into the insertion opening together with the flat circuit and to press the contact portions of the terminals against the flat circuit and prevent removal thereof. For example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H7-326439.
In the connector disclosed in the above publication, a grounding conductive member is attached to the connector housing for forming a ground circuit opposite the terminals. When the contact portions of the terminals are pressed against the conductors of the flat circuit, the grounding conductive member comes into contact with a ground conductor of the flat circuit to ground the circuit to a printed circuit board. The grounding conductive member discharges electric charges and eliminates the adverse effect of noise on various pieces of equipment and other associated electronic devices.
However, problems are encountered with grounding systems as described above, because the grounding conductive member comes into contact with the ground conductor of the flat circuit at a position substantially coincident with the position where the contact portions of the connector terminals come into contact with the signal traces on the flat circuit, with respect to the insertion direction of the flat circuit. Because of the proximity of these positions, noise may be generated from electrical charges.
In addition, the grounding conductive member is soldered to grounding lands on the printed circuit board directly under the connector housing. Therefore, the solder connections cannot be inspected and repaired if defective. The present invention is directed to solving these various problems.